Saturday, May 7, 2011

I'm always going on about frugal cooking and making stuff from scratch etc. Sometimes, though, I just look in the fridge and cupboard and go 'Why don't we have any FOOD?' - you know, stuff that is ready to eat, then and there.

And then I go away grumpily and a few minutes later come back, look in the fridge and cupboard again, and come to the same conclusion. And then sulk.

It happened today. It's not like there wasn't anything to eat. We'd just been to the market. We'd stocked up on vegetables and lentils and rice and tofu. I swear though, at that moment, there was nothing to eat.

Finally I just told myself to get over it and started chopping up some garlic and onion, and putting together the beginnings of a lentil stew. With potato. And cumin. And some brussel sprouts from last week.

Of course, like all lentil stew, it came out looking like brown slop. It was a brown slop. But it was food, and it was relatively tasty. And it wasn't that hard to make, I guess. I have just started to wonder why I don't make my life a bit easier and start buying things that are slightly more convenient. Chickpeas in cans. Pasta sauces in jars. That kind of stuff. When you look in the fridge and all you see is a large cauliflower looking back at you, it's not that inspiring. Especially when you are REALLY HUNGRY. And tired. Or bored.

I shouldn't be angry at the slop. The slop is how my boyfriend and I saved up for a deposit on a house. The slop is how we will actually manage to pay for the house (I hope!). But gee, slop can be boring sometimes. Sticking to your own rules can be hard!

Anyway, I'm going to go make a loaf of bread and hang the washing out now.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

My sister and I both woke up this morning with the same idea: Bake up a batch of fresh muesli (granola style), stew the rhubarb we bought at the farmer's market yesterday, bake a loaf of bread and immediately put on a plunger of coffee.

Teamwork!

We made the muesli by pouring into a bowl about 4 cups of oats, stirring in a quarter cup of juice, a few tablespoons of vegetable oil and a few heaped teaspoons of honey, and then baking it in the oven (spread out for 25 minutes at 170 degrees, then stirring in a generous sprinkling of linseeds, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds and then bake for another 25 minutes.

So! Muesli, yoghurt and stewed rhubarb! Very yummy but it won't last long around here.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

I made a broccoli polenta recipe from Veganomicon tonight and it was really, really delicious. I was flicking through the book hoping something would pop out at me, and then, 'pop!' - this stuck out.

It involved cooking up a pot of polenta, stirring through a head of finely chopped broccoli, smearing it out onto a baking tray and refridgerating it for an hour, and then slicing it into squares and pan frying it. The bits of broccoli on the edges went really crispy and crunchy, and it was all round yum.

For the sauce, I cooked up a whole load of home grown tomatoes and zucchini, some garlic & onion, salt, pepper, vinegar, chilli flakes, thyme and a little of bit of honey. I cooked it for about an hour until it was reduced and syrupy, and then used poured it on top of the polenta to serve.

Everyone in the house was really excited by it, I guess because it's totally different from the tofu-green vegetables-rice stuff that I usually make. And it was good!

a blog about cooking & eating (& a bit about art) in Melbourne

beans and barley is about eating well on a very low budget, recipes that are healthy and easy to make in a messy share house kitchen, eating in melbourne when it's late and you don't have much money and you are sick of shanghai dumpling and want something else, getting excited about flavours and ingredients, and trying to find time for seeing and making art in between all the eating...